After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla’s new CEO that Firefox will evolve into “a modern AI browser,” the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser.
On Tuesday, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the beloved Firefox web browser used by almost all GNU/Linux distributions as the default browser.
In his message as new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo stated that Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software while remaining the company’s anchor, and that Firefox will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.
What was not made clear is that Firefox will also ship with an AI kill switch that will let users completely disable all the AI features that are included in Firefox. Mozilla shared this important update earlier today to make it clear to everyone that Firefox will still be a trusted web browser.
And where to?
Ladybird, Servo and Floorp are all not useable as a daily driver and will take years to get there (and btw, the ladybird guy is a major shithead and last i heard of Servo was that they were going to cater to the embedded market, not a full blown browser).
Firefox forks can do what they want, even switch off the AI button, but i'd still say they help keeping the browser engine itself afloat, because they still depend on Firefox - there's not one fork with enough dev staff to keep up. That leaves us with chromium based browsers and safari. I'd say the commitment to the current userbase to make the changes optional is good enough to keep most of them.
I'd put current Firefox users much more in the department of "able to find the settings" than the vast majority of users. The majority wants something that works with everything they throw at it out of the box without rummaging through settings.